Zander: I couldn't show my face after cup KO ..now we can hold our heads high

May 25 2008 By Gavin Berry

ZANDER DIAMOND has revealed he was scared to leave the house even to put the rubbish out after the garbage Aberdeen served up against Queen of the South at Hampden.

Now the Dons defender is just relieved he is able to hold his head up high after a late season rally that almost saw Jimmy Calderwood's men sneak an unlikely European place.

Aberdeen signed off on Thursday with an impressive 2-0 win over Rangers at Pittodrie to send the Red Army away smiling for the summer.

And that feel good factor was a huge turnaround from the dismal Scottish Cup semi-final defeat to the Doonhamers which threatened to cast a shadow over their whole season.

Diamond reckons the Aberdeen players deserve credit for battling on after that incredible 4-3 loss at the national stadium when they could have collapsed.

He said: "I didn't want to come out of the house after the Queen of the South defeat - you don't even want to put the rubbish out for fear of being seen.

"It was a massive disappointment as everyone thought we were going to win.

"The few days on the training ground after it were hard. Emotions were low but the the gaffer, Jimmy Nicholl, Sandy Clark, Jim Leighton and Neale Cooper all mucked in and picked us up.

"A lot of people thought we would have gone under after the defeat at Hampden but there were still five games to play after the split.

"I know the fans wouldn't have wanted us to go under and you saw how they came out on Thursday night in good numbers.

"It was important for us to finish off the season with a win to give the supporters something to go away with for the summer.

"I thought we produced one of the performances of the campaign to beat Rangers.

"But even though we ended the season on a high that Queen of the South defeat is still something that will rankle with us for a while.

"I didn't even want to watch the Scottish Cup Final because it's a case of 'what if' as we could have been there against Rangers so it was a sore one to take."

The big disappointment for Diamond looking to next season is that Dons won't be back in the UEFA Cup after so many highs in the competition this term.

Yet the stopper believes if he hadn't had a goal wrongly chopped off against Celtic and Barry Nicholson's strike at Motherwell had stood then they could have been looking their passports out.

Zander said: "The fatigue is a factor but in the last six weeks if decisions had gone for us at Celtic Park when I scored and at Fir Park when Barry netted we could have sneaked in through the back door for Europe.

"It's so disappointing to have missed out on the UEFA Cup again as it was a great campaign in Europe for us and we've learned a lot from it.

"When we came back from European games I feel we let ourselves down. We just didn't perform well enough and that's something we can definitely learn from."